


Calloused Hands and the Prick of Teeth

by Schemilix



Category: Final Fantasy Tactics
Genre: Assorted Sexual Chicanery, Bloodplay, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-12
Updated: 2013-08-12
Packaged: 2017-12-23 06:16:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,167
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/922979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Schemilix/pseuds/Schemilix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Several months' worth of extremely lewd Templar fanfiction compiled into one easy-to-run-from page. (Same 'verse as Blood and Gold.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Calloused Hands and the Prick of Teeth

mark  
\-----

A good punishment is deterrent; the memory alone bites at the shadow of the deed in the mind and so arrests it. A better punishment does no such thing. It is a temptation of itself, a pressure, and it dances carefully with the need not to be caught. It is a dangerous game, a painful one, though far too enjoyable.  
There are some punishments in this game that cannot be unwrought.  
It is, ironically, a disorder of both of their minds. It must be. What seed planted it is uncertain. Perhaps it was a childhood devoid of control that has each seek order. Vormav creates it; Loffrey is his hammer or his hot iron depending entirely on the lion's mood.  
On some days he is his canvas. Loffrey presses the wash of bruises on his arms. They pool like paint in colours an artist would envy. Being broken makes him beautiful, though he is no more than a mannequin wearing the scars and scrapes as badges.  
He claimed him as his own, pretending that to possess something takes nothing of oneself. Now the hand that holds his yoke belongs as much to Loffrey as it does to himself. Or the whip or, in this case, the sharp little boot-knife, pressed against his throat.  
In company their war-games use pieces and pretend strategy. Here there are no rules, only bloodshed and slick skin, hitched breaths and blasphemy.  
He has claimed him in word and in deed, with harsh words or the harsh feeling of wood against his hipbones as he is taken roughly against his own desk. The marks fade. Each edict of ownership is burned except for a scrap - a scar here formed from only part of a wound, or in the way he flinches to feel the man's tall shadow over him, sometimes.  
He knows he is insane. They say the insane have no knowledge of being insane but that is untrue. The worst kind of insanity comes with clarity, with performing acts that harm both body and soul with complete consciousness.  
Vormav is the final line of a memoir that began with a tutor when he was as much boy as man and ended with clawing and biting and seeking helplessness. His body aches whether he is injured or not, a sickness of his mind that has spilled into his body. At least the bruises let him pretend, perversely, that he is whole.  
Their game escalates; the knife would never have dared his throat but a short time ago. Death perches on that blade, as small or as enormous as she needs to be. Loffrey knows she watches as Vormav pushes his head forward and sinks his unnatural teeth into the back of his neck like daggers. The feeling is entirely painful, more tearing than piercing. He goes limp as if he were a cub, falling into it; it matters not what it is between them, blood or seed, only that the intensity melds them where they hurt most.  
Loffrey feels as if he can taste his blood in Vormav's mouth. His eyes are shut and he might be whimpering, or maybe moaning, but he isn't sure.  
He feels rough fingers touch the punctures. Strange how teeth feel so big to one's tongue and so small to the fingers. It feels as if Vormav ate him whole when truly, the neatly-spaced punctures wouldn't span his palm.  
But they scar. Hidden by his hood, Loffrey touches them sometimes, on his nape, the barest trace of roughness. Maybe a blind man would touch them and read their purpose. In the language of teeth scars mean one thing only, that he is Vormav's and his body always will be.

sleep  
\-----

Go long enough without sleep and the world feels hyper-real. Whatever barrier wakefulness creates between the self and the non-self dissolves; you become a raw nerve, waiting for input, shaking as if electrified. Maybe you feel more alive, or maybe it is like the final firing of neurons before the end. The blood sings, but sluggishly, a muted song. Skin burns, thoughts race, there is no control, like intoxication or a ritual-state.  
This is normal for Loffrey. Before sleep evaded him. Now, he pushes it away and watches it race. Ralseph waits there, he is sure of it. He lays awake and imagines his bones cracking as the daemon violates him, and he cannot sleep. And as he cannot tolerate the trying, he remains awake.  
Mostly, he is bored. With so many hours awake even books cannot distract him for long. His mind eats itself, mulling over the same dark thoughts, picking away any semblance of hope with cold logic. The fear cannot penetrate the electric feeling of a day and night's wakefulness. Instead he is numb, crackling-numb, like aftershocks. He cannot think.  
He only feels, but almost in flashes, as his mind runs away with each impulse and his body takes over in absentia. As Vormav kisses his chest, it might be choice that has him pull his hair until he growls, or instinct. Loffrey isn't sure how he got here, he knows only that he doesn't want to leave.  
He runs his lips along Vormav's collarbone and swears he can smell, where cloth would meet flesh, the hint of incense that follows him. It's so quintessentially Vormav that he feels his nails digging into his skin from lust, burying his head in his neck and whispering. Maybe he is drunk, Loffrey thinks, as he counts the ridges of Vormav's spine. But his fingers follow him precisely and the feeling of concealed bone is as clear as burning.  
Maybe it is the daemon in him; he wants to rip it out. It isn't anger. It is only those inches which Vormav keeps inside he wants for himself. With his teeth he will claim him. He tastes blood and hears Vormav hiss, feels the give of skin under his teeth and notices that he is biting his shoulder, hard. Then burning as Vormav pushes him down on his back and bites his thighs in retaliation, where no one will see, and lazily licks the blood off.  
Vormav's calloused fingers are rough on his skin. It feels like linen on sunburn, but not unpleasant, not to him. He pulls on Vormav's hair until he submits, leaning up until their lips meet. The skin of his lips is hot. Vormav kisses him with his teeth as much as his tongue. He kisses with the same unhurried intensity as anything and Loffrey feels liquid, feels his eyes close and his mouth part for him. Loffrey traces maps on Vormav's back with his nails, red roads that lead to nowhere.  
He knows it's only for the feeling, when Vormav's hand tangles with his. The skin-on-skin. There is no feeling there but the flesh, no emotion, but Loffrey brushes his thumb against Vormav's palm anyway, imagining that he might love him.  
Vormav looks him in the eye and he gets lost. So dark, Loffrey thinks. You could lose ships in those eyes. He doesn't care if he gets caught staring and this time it is Vormav who looks away.  
When Vormav fucks him he is slow and rough, like he kisses, and his nails prick the tender skin over his ribs. He takes him from behind; neither can see the others' face and Vormav's hands scratch, or brush his nipples with the pads of his thumbs. He kisses the scars on the back of his neck, each tooth-mark, one by one.  
Loffrey takes his hand and kisses the backs of his knuckles until Vormav laughs, quietly, and pushes a finger in his mouth. Loffrey bites it, not gently and not hard, almost like they play at fighting. He tastes of salt and maybe blood.  
By now Vormav knows Loffrey is close by the way his thighs tighten and his head tips back; he knows to bite him as he climaxes until he bleeds. Nothing else can make him scream any more. The tension of his body starts to ache until Vormav spills into him with a harsh growl and then, only then, the relief of collapse.  
He feels empty, or like clouds - insubstantial, and like Vormav's arm around his waist is the only thing keeping him as flesh. Only the brush of lips against his throat says he is real, Loffrey thinks, and he rests his head against Vormav's chest.  
The beating heart, so strong and so impossible. Vormav's ribs rises and falls with their effort, as reliable as a tide. He is the strength Loffrey will never have. The fingers touching his scars promise that he will suffer no other demons to claim him.  
"Sleep," Vormav says, still half-breathless. The tips of Loffrey's finger tingle, and then he feels nothing.

dog  
\-----

It feels strange and also thrilling to teach an experienced man how he should fuck. Certainly, Vormav’s rough thrusts and his way of kissing arouse him, the way his body seeks as much contact between their sweat-slicked skin as possible, the prick of his teeth on flushed skin. 

And yet there is still a different desire - it is almost too easy, to merely ask and be fucked hard like he wishes, there is no challenge. And so gradually, he brings up the games from his Akademy days. Vormav, naturally, is no stranger to control and he takes to the play as easily as if he were born to it. Soon enough Vormav is surprising him instead - not least when he moves so quietly for a man so large, appearing behind Loffrey and sliding a hand under his robe to pinch a nipple. Loffrey grunts in surprise, at least pleased to notice that the man touching him without the faintest hint of question is Vormav. 

”You of all men should know there is a time and a place for such… habits,” he says, clearing his throat when his voice slips. Vormav is merciless with Loffrey’s sweet-spots.

”I’m going to my chambers. You will follow me, and I will fuck you like a dog,” Vormav says in his ear. “Just like a dog.”

Then he lets him go and walks away. For a split second Loffrey thinks of denying him, purely because he dislikes the presumption. Then he realises that Vormav is completely right - he barely takes the time to re-adjust his robes before he is following his Commander, two steps behind. 

Once Vormav has locked the door he pulls out a chair quite casually and settles into it. 

”Well then, Wodring. Dogs don’t dress. Strip,” he says, gesturing dismissively to the Templar standing in the doorway. Loffrey raises an eyebrow but does as commanded, pushing his hood back before starting with his boots and then untying his robe, opening it slowly. Vormav makes no attempt to hide the beginnings of his arousal.

”You claim you are not attracted to me, and yet here you are, and I haven’t even touched you.” Loffrey chides, as he reaches for the fastening on his trousers. Vormav lets him finish before saying,

”Bark less, dog.”

”You would have to make me,” Loffrey challenges in return. 

”I’m not getting out of this chair on your account, now shut up and show me your cock.”

Falling quiet, Loffrey undoes his trousers. When Vormav tells him to turn around he does. The prickle of self-consciousness he feels as he bends down is a feeling he can’t recall experiencing since his turbulent youth, and it surprises him.

Looking over his shoulder, Loffrey sees Vormav beckon him and, with deliberate slowness, does so, kneeling in front of him.

”You are… improvi-” he manages to say, before he feels Vormav’s hand close over his mouth viper-quick. His thumb presses the knot of muscle on Loffrey’s jaw so hard he flinches. 

”I said shut the fuck up,” Vormav tells him, mildly, before relaxing his grip slightly. The rush of relief makes Loffrey close his eyes. “Now nod that you will only speak when I want you to speak.”

Slowly, Loffrey does so, finding himself watching the floor and feeling Vormav’s gaze on him, waiting. Then Vormav whistles faintly and, looking up, Loffrey understands. Ducking his head, he moves forward, still on his knees. When Vormav touches his face he leans into it, kisses his palm and, after a moment, leans his cheek against Vormav’s still-clothed thigh. He can feel the heat of his skin even through the fabric and looks up at him, dutifully silent. He can hear Vormav unbuckling his trousers but doesn’t look away from his eyes. He looks away to avoid looking too deeply into them. It wouldn’t be appropriate. 

Instead he leans forward and runs his tongue across Vormav’s cock. Rather than take it into his mouth he laps at it, teasing - or like a dog. He plants his hands on the floor and leans forward, teasing his slit with his tongue and running long, slow strokes along his shaft. Vormav’s fingers rap on the chair as his breathing becomes irregular.

”Bring me the slick,” he moans, and gestures behind him, losing his composure for a moment. Moving to the drawers Vormav indicated, Loffrey finds it and turns to bring it back. At Vormav’s tut, he stops. He lowers himself to his knees again and puts the container between his teeth, approaching on all fours and leaning his chin on Vormav’s thigh again, offering.

Vormav takes the slick from him and pats his other thigh. When Loffrey looks at him in confusion, he jerks his chin up and growls,

”Up, boy.” 

So Loffrey does, climbing onto the chair with his legs straddling Vormav’s. 

”I pity the chair,” Loffrey mutters. He hisses and falls silent again when Vormav slaps him across the face. To his surprise Vormav sets the slick aside and takes Loffrey’s cock with a rough grip, not entirely a comfortable one. Loffrey braces his hands on the arms of the chair and leans into the contact all the same, biting his lip as if he were seventeen again. Aching as he is, Vormav’s hand is merciless and quick, the other braced against the small of his back to keep him from leaning back too far, nails scratching across his slick skin. Loffrey grits his teeth as he comes, bucking against Vormav’s almost painful grip. When his legs start to buckle, Vormav digs his nails in deeper. 

”We’re not done with you yet,” he says, picking the slick back up. His teeth scrape across Loffrey’s shoulder as he slides slicked fingers inside him. The contact on his sweet-spot makes Loffrey wince from the sensitivity and, feeling him stiffen, Vormav only pushes against it harder. 

A hand on Vormav’s chest will do for a signal - Loffrey’s cheek still stings. Lowering himself onto Vormav’s cock is an effort of will, but Vormav doesn’t interfere until Loffrey starts, gingerly, to move. Once he does, Vormav takes a tight hold of his hips and, through it, control of the movement of his hips. Planting his feet on the floor, Vormav thrusts up into Loffrey, slower than usual but no less rough. Loffrey’s nails scrape against the chair as he rides him, feeling in the thorny pressure the pleasure mounting again. With his breath still not caught from the last time he pants, knowing what Vormav must be thinking about the sounds. Tired as Loffrey’s body is, Vormav comes before him with a shuddering cry. Through his rhythm falters and his grip on Loffrey weakens, he doesn’t stop until Loffrey arches again, swearing with uncharacteristic vehemence as he tosses his head back. Vormav’s name finds its way into the words coming from Loffrey’s mouth, with no difference in tone from the curses. 

Vormav’s arm keeps him from toppling backwards off the chair as the tension, again, leaves him, this time more completely. He can do nothing to keep kneeling, only move to free himself from Vormav and then collapse, still panting, against that heaving chest with his head on his shoulder.

”Good dog,” Vormav breathes, making Loffrey press his thumb between his commander’s ribs spitefully. Despite the aching the exhausted Loffrey finds himself drifting into sleep before Vormav pushes him off, and onto his bed. Still clothed, Vormav drops down beside him and, with no room for complaint, pulls him close again.

”Sleep, fool,” he murmurs in his ear and Loffrey, as always, complies.

cleanse  
\-----

Loffrey had thought to step out of his body, as he was accustomed to at times, to think of some other trivial thing and treat his body like the flesh-and-muscle husk that it was. He had said to call him Gerrith, as if they were friends, as if it wasn't an effort to mask the disgust in his eyes at the cruel and weak creature who sought to subjugate him.

Already he was doing it, as he agreed, because Vormav asked; as rested a steady hand on the doorway; as he turned his back and bared his scars and skin for scrutiny and knelt, head bowed, like some acolyte, as if he were a supplicant and willing.

Blood boiling, he shut his eyes, pretending, always pretending.

Pain he can push aside; roughness like battle, familiar, but no, the touch may as well leave a trail of slime on his bared skin for all it sickens him, and his eyes open. But he persists and remains, moving as instructed, passive as a virgin or a lamb.

He did not expect to himself clawing at the sheets blindly, though he was twice this man’s strength, knows how to break the neck of warriors - but not now, his mind is blank, filled only with the shock of panic and an acidic wave of loathing. An animal need to escape, run - all flight, no fight, hissing wordlessly as he strains against the hands on his bruised hips. _But I did it for you._

——————

It’s as he tries not to limp later, his eyes flashing enough that even Cletienne keeps from his path, that the worm speaks; you deserve this. He locks the door, slides into the water and thinks, indulgently, of drowning.

The clean heat does little; the feeling is not dirt. He scratches half absently, sleepily almost, as if chasing a nascent demon out of his skin.

—————-

Vormav finds him shivering in hot water, his back laced with red marks in ragged lines, face inscrutable and blank. In the moment when Loffrey opens his eyes, Vormav can see that he has been crying. Then they close and he turns away sharply, as if to deny his presence.

”You did this,” Loffrey accuses in an uncharacteristically weak voice. Vormav can see his skin twitch like a beaten dog at the sound of his footsteps approaching, as if he expects pain but restrains himself from fleeing. 

A loyal hound, Loffrey thinks, wanting nothing more than to cut Vormav’s black heart out. 

”You agreed,” says Vormav, cooly, as he sits beside him on the bath-edge. 

”You asked. That’s as good as commanding. You… you know I cannot refuse you.” 

An atavistic whim has Loffrey clench his fist and hit the water. The gesture seems so childish and pointless, such a dulled impact it is. He thinks of drowning them both, somehow, in some way, filling their lungs with the same water, dying with the same endless breath.

He thinks of murdering Vormav often, as heatedly as this, with the same desperate impulse that is half destruction and half claiming, of fulfilling the mute spark of his own life by extinguishing it in the same blow as one so bright and terrible as Vormav’s. 

Jumping, usually. Wrapping his arms around him while he is foolishly off guard and taking one fatal step.

He grips Vormav’s wrist so hard he feels bones creak - a touch on his back. Vormav’s hand may as well be heated iron for all it makes his body twist. 

”Don’t,” is all he can say, though he wants to snarl, don’t touch me, don’t ever touch me, leave - leave, yes. The urge to rid the world of them both flares like a bright star at his nape, burning with the heat of that touch, and then fades.

He chokes. The noise is pitiful, as pitiful as the fact that Vormav’s touch soothes whatever it is that crawls under his naked skin, how his body wants to lean into his arms; because if he is Vormav’s, then he cannot be claimed by the human-skinned monster he submitted himself to, in this lion-skinned monster’s name.

Whether a game or some attempt to ward him from self-slaughter, Vormav, still robed, drops into the water and pulls Loffrey against his chest, so that the fabric burns against the torn skin on his back. It doesn’t occur to him that this could be regret or kindness or human concern. Still he leans back, submitting to that calculated and gentle touch. So helpless, so safe in the familiar environs of his blind, idiot devotion. 

yield  
\-----

Fighting Vormav feels like fighting a giant, but there are men larger than he on the field, men who see a small hooded man and take him for an easy target. There is no mercy there as there is no mercy here in this training room, the only solace a padded floor for when this or that face meets it at speed.

He cannot use his strength, or much his speed, and so against Vormav he must use his wits. Long gone are the days where his old comrade would underestimate him, but today he is incensed and that is why they have called this spar. 

A pretence, of Loffrey fighting back. Truly he only expects to take the blows in someone elses’ stead, rather than deal his own.

It comes as no surprise, then, when Vormav is lighting-quick-suddenly behind him, and his arm is twisted up behind his back, painfully. And so it becomes a game - as Vormav pushes his arm up he only bends forward and grits his teeth against the pain, because Tengille needs his swordarm as much as he does. 

Until he it on his knees, and he can bend no further, and only then does Vormav say,

”Yield.”

Loffrey looks up, despite the twinge of pain. There is a tell-tale hoarse note in that voice, a familiar one. 

Chuckling, he declines and, still smiling somehow, grunts in pain as Vormav twists.

He feels with the stab of discomfort a hand slide along his stomach and under his waistband, a faint rasp of stubble against his neck.

The voice, very close, bids him yield and, bracing, playing this game, Loffrey does not. 

Ungodly strong, that man. He pins Loffrey with one arm and with the other strokes him. One hand harsh and the other gentle. Part of Loffrey is afraid of those strong arms getting confused about such a valuable part of his anatomy.

The other part, in fact quite the same part he is concerned for, is uncaring. 

The rules are clear: as long as he can stand. Or he will have to finish himself. And there is something about Vormav’s large hand that he would take rather that both his own. This moment where they breathe harshly perhaps from the blows they have taken or perhaps something more primal still than fighting and sweat. 

With his free hand - useless to try to pry Vormav off with it, twisted as he is - he fumbles at his belt and, with a clumsy skill born of several rough encounters with only one hand free to undress, unbuckles it. He pushes his waistband down more by luck than skill and Vormav, twisting his arm savagely, chuckles in his ear at his undisguised desire, the cracked yelp the sudden pain wrings from Loffrey. 

”You’d let me break your arm to touch you like this, would you, Wodring?”

Perhaps Vormav jests, but Loffrey’s answer is an earnest yes, at this precise moment, and logic be damned. Blindly he reaches behind him, knowing where Vormav is from the prick of teeth against his exposed neck, and tangles calloused hands in greying hair. He pulls, hard, but Vormav only growls and bites harder, twists his arm harder, and his damned stroking does not let up for a fraction of an instant. 

He twists against Vormav’s grip, arching his back as far as he can go, breath ragged and rapid not making a sound other than a low hiss of pain and animal pleasure. 

Vormav releases him and kisses his neck, his shoulders, lazily, his rough fingers stroking the inside of his thigh with something like affection.

The nerves in him that seem twisted relative to other men make the dull ache of his twisted arm, the throbbing warmth of easing pain, leave him as breathless as his release. And how foolish he is to lean into that touch, closing his eyes and - stupid, stupid - daring to tangle their fingers together, behind them, where neither can see their sole concession to an act of ‘love’.


End file.
